Top Singaporean data scientists raise $6m from Sequoia India, Temasek for AI startup

Linus Lee was the head of data science at Twitter’s Asia-Pacific office. His twin brother, Silvanus, was the head of data science at Uber and Dropbox.

Together with Liu Feng-Yuan, formerly the director of data science and AI at Government Digital Services, the high-flying trio have founded BasisAI, a startup that aims to build machine-learning products for fintech and internet firms.

Basis AI announced today that it has raised S$8.2 million (US$6 million) in seed funding from high-profile investors Temasek and Sequoia India. For Temasek – Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund – the deal is unique because it typically invests in later-stage companies and not startups that have just come out of stealth mode.

BasisAI founders (left to right) Silvanus Lee, Liu Feng-Yuan, and Linus Lee.

Meanwhile, Sequoia India has been doubling down on early-stage investments across India and Southeast Asia.

“Our proprietary AI platform enables organizations to deploy models seamlessly and securely, track data provenance, monitor algorithmic integrity, and ensure AI explainability,” BasisAI’s website explains. The startup will help companies acquire customers, boost user experience, and mitigate fraud.

In data science terms, data provenance means the historical record of the data and its origins. AI explainability refers to artificial intelligence in which the internal workings are easily understood by humans as opposed to a black box.

See: Meet the data scientist plotting Twitter’s revival

The opacity of machine learning systems is the status quo today, which could pose big problems. After all, if humans can’t understand how a system works, it would be difficult to troubleshoot it.

“We believe we can build a world-class AI company in Singapore with a strong engineering culture, [one] that values first-principles thinking and [has] a deep respect for the power of collaborative multidisciplinary teams,” says Silvanus.

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